Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., at times defiant and defensive, describes his fateful decision to run for re-election in 2024, his immediate reaction to the debate that derailed his campaign and his exasperation with Prime Minister of Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in a new memoir, “Promise Me, America.”
Here are five takeaways from the 480-page book, scheduled to be released on Tuesday, at what would have been the rough midpoint of Mr. Biden’s second term. The 83-year-old former president, who has aggressive prostate cancer, has scaled back promotion of the memoir because of his condition.
He says his advisers unanimously supported his re-election run in 2023.
Mr. Biden writes that he solidified his decision to run for re-election after discussing the idea with top advisers at the White House in 2023.
The reception, he recalls, was supportive and unanimous. At the time of the meeting, Mr. Biden writes, the campaign was already starting to kick into gear: He had TV ads and an announcement prepared.
“We went around the room,” writes Mr. Biden, who was just past his 80th birthday, had a drooping approval rating and had once portrayed his presidency as a bridge to the next generation of Democrats. “Everyone offered their thoughts on the race. Everyone was in. There was no demurral or dissent. I was in.”
In her own memoir published last year, “107 Days,” former Vice President Kamala Harris said Mr. Biden’s decision to run again was “recklessness” and that she should “perhaps” have advised him against it. But Ms. Harris wrote that she was in “the worst position to make the case.”
In his book, Mr. Biden writes that he was on top of the issues and that he had showed strength in the primary by gliding to the nomination over a long-shot bid from a third-term Minnesota congressman, Dean Phillips.
He says he knew right after the debate that he ‘screwed that up.’
After his disastrous debate performance against Donald J. Trump in June 2024, Mr. Biden appeared at a watch party with the first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, who declared that he had done well.
“You answered every question,” she said as a stone-faced Mr. Biden looked on, half-smiling. “You knew all the facts.”
Privately, Mr. Biden immediately told Ms. Biden that he had bungled the debate.
“‘Well, I screwed that up,’” Mr. Biden told his wife, he writes, adding that he had used harsher language. He knew onstage that he was “having a terrible night,” he writes.
After the debate, he also promptly sought an assessment from Ron Klain, his chief of staff, he writes.
“Not good,” Mr. Klain told him.
During the debate, Mr. Biden had memorably declared that “We finally beat Medicare,” a line that prompted Mr. Trump to say, “He beat it to death.”
“What I meant to say,” Mr. Biden writes, “was, ‘We finally beat Big Pharma.’”
His performance led to a month of Democratic hand-wringing until Mr. Biden dropped out of the race.
During his abridged book tour, Mr. Biden has downplayed the history-altering debate. “It didn’t disturb me because it wasn’t consequential,” he told People magazine.
Mr. Biden says that Mr. Trump’s “answers about his responsibility for January 6, and his refusal to say he would accept the results of the upcoming election, were disqualifying.”
And Mr. Biden notes that other presidents had bad debates.
“The difference was that every other president was given the chance to redeem themselves in a second debate,” Mr. Biden writes. “As it turned out, that chance would not be available to me.”
He says he wrestled with a ‘dilemma’ before dropping out.
Mr. Biden recalls meeting with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, at Mr. Biden’s beach house in Delaware about a week before dropping out of the race. In an emotional conversation, Mr. Schumer urged Mr. Biden to withdraw.
“I told Schumer he had a lot of gumption (I may have said it differently at the time), coming to my home and telling me to get out of the race,” Mr. Biden writes. “Loyalty matters to me.”
A representative for Mr. Schumer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Biden was also pressured by Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker. He writes that she told him that there were “no polls” that showed he had “any chance.”
The calls for Mr. Biden to drop out continued to grow. He learned, he writes, that Senator Patty Murray of Washington planned to release a letter surfacing major Democratic defections.
“This weighed heavily on me, because even at that point, not a lot of leaders had been willing to put their names to a call for me to withdraw,” Mr. Biden writes.
Mr. Biden writes that he faced a “dilemma” — and that he had a handle on the challenges facing him.
“Was I old?” he writes. “Yes. Was I able to do the job? Yes. Were voters angry about inflation? Yes. Were they angry about immigration? Yes. All tough problems. But not insurmountable ones.”
He lists a number of leading Democrats who he says wanted him to carry on the campaign. And, he writes, “I believed the Democratic rank and file were still with me.”
But eight days after the meeting with Mr. Schumer, he withdrew from the race, pressured, he writes, by “so many major voices in our party” who were “determined to force me out.”
Ms. Harris asked him several times if he was “sure” that he wanted to drop out, he writes. When he said yes, she then asked him to endorse her immediately, rather than with a delay, he recalls. About 20 minutes later, he agreed to do so, he writes. .
Mr. Biden later moved to repair his ties with Ms. Pelosi, despite what he said were her furious efforts to push him out of the race. They reconnected for lunch at an Italian restaurant, he writes, adding that they “had been through too much together to allow a rift to go un-mended.”
He says Netanyahu had ‘no qualms’ about misleading him.
Mr. Biden writes at length about Mr. Netanyahu, who prosecuted a war in Gaza with U.S. support after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, one of the most contentious periods of Mr. Biden’s presidency.
Mr. Biden says he felt Mr. Netanyahu regularly misled him. He describes a “familiar pattern” as Mr. Biden urged the Israeli government to take pains to prevent civilian casualties.
“He would promise to do more,” Mr. Biden writes, “and then another aggressive action would follow, killing more civilians.”
Mr. Biden writes that Mr. Netanyahu’s actions, like his own re-election campaign, posed a “dilemma.”
“Bibi had no qualms about making promises he had no power — or intention — to keep,” Mr. Biden writes, using the prime minister’s nickname.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Israeli relationship divided Democrats and angered some in his own administration.
Mitt Romney gave him some advice.
A year into his presidency, Mr. Biden writes, he invited Senator Mitt Romney, the moderate Utah Republican and former presidential nominee, for a tour of the White House.
Mr. Romney offered some advice to the aging Mr. Biden, who had started to walk in a stiff, shuffling style.
“Pump your arms,” Mr. Romney, who is four years younger than Mr. Biden, said, according to the book. The senator told the president: “You’re holding your hands stiffly by your side when you walk. Pump your arms and you’ll look more energetic and confident.”
Mr. Biden writes that he tried to follow the senator’s “good advice.”
